BAGHDAD (Agence France Press) — US Apache helicopters sprayed fire on the private army
of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr during fierce
battles in the western Baghdad district of Al-Showla, witnesses and an
AFP correspondent said

"Two Apaches opened fire on armed members of the Mehdi Army," said
Showla resident Abbas Amid.The fighting erupted when five trucks of US soldiers and the Iraqi Civil
Defense Corps (ICDC) tried to enter the district and were attacked by
Sadr supporters, Amid said.

Coming under fire, the ICDC, a paramilitary force trained by the
Americans, turned on the US soldiers and started to shoot at them,
according to Amid.

The soldiers fled their vehicles and headed for cover and then began to
battle both the Mehdi Army and the ICDC members, he said. Their vehicles
were set ablaze.

Heavy gunfire rattled the district and columns of black smoke billowed
into the sky.

Burning tyres and tree trunks were used to barricade the neighborhood,
where young men toting clubs and carrying light weapons
patrolled the streets.

But 16 US Humvees all-terrain vehicles, backed by two tanks, rolled
into Showla, the AFP correspondent said.

Tension was also running high in the Shiite-controlled Sadr City slum
in northern Baghdad, a day after pitched battles between Sadr partisans
and the US military left 22 Iraqis dead and 85 others wounded, and
killed seven US troops.

US troops opened fire Monday wounding a child after a group of children
stoned soldiers deployed outside the Karama police station, an AFP
correspondent said.

Amer al-Hussein, a spokesman for Sadr in the impoverished neighborhood,
told AFP that the incendiary Shiite leader had "called for a return to
calm but his partisans want to fight against the American troops".

"We want peace not confrontations but if the Americans enter our
neighborhood, there will be a fight," Hussein said.

He said that US troops had arrested militiamen from Sadr's Mehdi Army
but the report could not be immediately confirmed by the US military.

Three US tanks blocked the two entrances to Sadr City and soldiers
searched cars while helicopters flew overhead. US troops also reclaimed
the main police station which Sadr backers had seized Sunday.

The seven US soldiers died Sunday fighting for control of police and
public buildings in the Shiite suburb.

Thousands of people, some of them armed, gathered outside Sadr's
offices in Sadr City to take part in the funeral of people killed in
Sunday's fierce fighting.

"There is only one God. America is the enemy of Allah," the crowd
chanted as a coffin was carried through the streets.

The uprising by Sadr's supporters also raged on elsewhere as they
seized the governor's office in the British-controlled southern port
city of Basra, an AFP correspondent on the scene said.

Dozens of armed Mehdi Army militiamen stormed the governor's office at
dawn Monday, raising a green Islamic flag on the roof, he said.

Four hours later British troops were no longer in the area while
policemen who had been inside the building when it was overrun were seen
deployed alongside the Medhi Army militiamen.

In the deadliest clashes, at least 20 people were killed and more than
200 wounded in fighting Sunday between the Mehdi Army and Spanish-led
coalition forces in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf. A Salvador soldier
also died.

Another four were killed in similar clashes between British-led forces
and Sadr's supporters in the southern city of Amara.

Sadr told his followers on Sunday to "terrorize" the enemy because
protests had become useless. It was not clear whether Sadr's call was an
order to resort to violence.

Tensions had boiled over with the arrest of a top Sadr aide in
connection with the murder of a rival cleric last year and after the
shutting down of a pro-Sadr newspaper last month.